Kakisa River

The Kakisa River leaves Kakisa Lake at the small community of Kakisa, drops over Lady Evelyn Falls a few kilometres downstream, and runs on to Beaver Lake and the Mackenzie River. It is one of the few grayling rivers in the NWT you can drive to: a short side road off Highway 1, south of Great Slave Lake, reaches the falls, the territorial park and the village. The water below the lake is clear, and the falls stop fish moving up, so they gather in the pool and the runs below it.

Arctic grayling are the reason to come. They take dry flies and small nymphs in the riffles below the falls from soon after the ice goes out, usually late May, through the summer and into September. Walleye and northern pike come up the river too. Read the gauge at the Kakisa Lake outlet: the river fishes best from about 30 to 130 m³/s, and over about 250 in a big spring melt it is high and pushy. It runs highest in June, after the melt fills the lake, and drops through the summer.

The Kakisa is in the Mackenzie River Management Area, which has its own, lower limits: 1 grayling a day, none under 36 cm fork length, 1 pike, and 1 walleye a day until June 6, then 2. Only barbless hooks are allowed anywhere in the NWT, and no one may fish within 23 m downstream of a falls. Kakisa is the home of the Ka'a'gee Tu First Nation: respect the village and private land.